Thursday, 2 September 2010

Scarlett Dedd by Cathy Brett

Scarlett Deddby Cathy Brett

Summary: You're dead Scarlett...

Previously a poor taste jibe from school frenemies, now a statement of fact.

Scarlett is absolutely mortified (in more ways than one) to discover that she's accidentally killed herself while trying to get out of a school trip. Even worse, she's taken her entire family with her.

Life as a ghost is pretty dull - if only some of her friends were dead too...

This book was kind of awesome, seriously. For the first two thirds of the book I was just enjoying it and I liked it but the final third made me really like it. It was fast paced and hilarious in a sort of melancholy Tim Burton kind of way.

I loved all the characters, they were quirky and yet weirdly realistic - I loved that Cathy showed the immaturity of the teenagers because a lot of books I read, although I like them, they seem to try and turn all of the characters (except the antagonists, of course) into these deep philosophical people and it was refreshing to read a book where the kids acted like kids and the teens acted like teens and the parents were actually present and parent-like.

I really liked that it was broken up with her blog entries and chatroom logs, it made the book really... fun, I guess is the right word.

I'm pretty much fascinated with the whole ghost thing, I love reading books about it, and I loved the world Cathy created -- her version of the afterlife is one of my favourites I've read so far and it's funny, because it doesn't seem very plausable and yet it's written in a way that makes it seem really realistic. I actually wish it was real.

I adored the illustrations in the book and actually, my only complaint was that some of the pages were a little awkward/hard to read because the writing was swirled round in a weird way (in the ice skating chapter) or the words were printed over a dark illustration so they weren't very clear.

Anyway, I loved the book and really recommend it. And I also really hope there's gonna be a sequel, I'm going to look that up once I finish writing this.